Is it time to throw out time?
I should open this up with a clear statement of context: I like to work. So when I talk about work in terms of time, it isn’t a rebuke of time spent working, but rather an examination of the role time should play in work. Since I am someone who likes to suffer through long-distance runs, I understand how we ended up praising people who claim 80+ hour work weeks as though they are some type of elite work athlete. But if we get smarter on how our bodies and minds operate, it makes us rethink our strategy to improve our outcomes. Elite endurance athletes understand that the number of hours spent training doesn’t correlate to successful performance. There are myriad factors that affect performance — a combination of sleep health, intensity training, and nutrition will be more effective than just racking up long hours running. Ultra athletes are seeing significant improvement in their race times when they approach training in this holistic way — we’re talking hours, not minutes.
The 40-hour workweek has revealed itself as one of those historical norms that struggle to find relevance for many businesses in today’s society. While the 40-hour workweek has noble origins, its functional application is a stretch for most knowledge workers in 2020. The labor movement brought about the societal revelation that 100-hour workweeks weren’t sustainable or healthy and Henry Ford was able to prove that working people more than 40 hours had no real marginal gain on manufacturing lines. This eventually brought about The Fair Labor Standards act in 1940 which created the existing paradigm we’re still operating under today.
So what are workers doing during those 40 hours nowadays?
According to a survey from AtSpoke, this is a general breakdown of how employees spend their time at work:
45% = primary job duties
40% = meetings, administrative tasks, and “interruptions”
14% = email
A task will expand to the time provided. And the stats above start to illustrate the fact that people will fill their time if they are expected to, whether or not the work they’re doing is actually important or effective. It fills up 40 hours because it is supposed to.
The office should be a tool for driving forward the most impactful work and the environment should be suited to those key types of work. Instead of optimizing someone's ability to spend 8 hours a day in an office, we should optimize towards creating opportunities and environments ideal for peak work.
If 40% of someone’s time is being occupied with meetings and interruptions, you can see why they might not be so eager to get back to the office as it used to be. Conversely, if the office was designed to provide an experience, environmental setting, or suite of tools that they could not easily recreate at home, they would probably make the choice to return without direction from leadership.
We need to lean on our patience right now and maybe even use it to our advantage. While we have time to make adjustments and get smarter, we can create spaces that provide a meaningful return on the investment required. Spaces that draw people in and provide inspiration and shelter from distraction — not just somewhere to sit 40 hours a week.
What’s working in the news:
Business Insider — A history of how the 40-hour workweek became the norm in America It wasn’t really that long ago, but the world has changed 100x since we adopted this approach. There’s an interesting timeline of the evolution here.
CDC — Overtime and Extended Work Shifts: Recent Findings on Illnesses, Injuries, and Health Behaviors The CDC provides data and studies to show how measuring work by time is creating bad side effects.
NY Times — An Evangelist for Remote Work Sees the Rest of the World Catch On The Founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, designed his company of over 1,000 employees to be remote from the start many years ago. When asked about the 40-hour workweek, he comments that it’s about results, not time.
